


i gave so many signs

by ellapromachos



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Anakin Skywalker Has Issues, Angst, Canon Compliant, Dark Anakin Skywalker, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:28:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25921321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellapromachos/pseuds/ellapromachos
Summary: when he looks back it all seems so painfully obvious.or: four times obi-wan missed the signs and the one time he didn't.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 8
Kudos: 135





	i gave so many signs

**Author's Note:**

> fuck you, em. you know what you did.
> 
> if you are not em just move on and pretend you didn't see anything
> 
> this is not a fucking obikin fic please stay away from me

Everyone knew some version of how Anakin came to the Temple. He’d been an ace pod racer in the Outer Rim and the council begged to train him. He’d been a slave who led an uprising when he was only a child. Master Qui-Gon was so enthralled with him that he abandoned his own padawan for the chance to train Anakin.

None of them ever came close to being true. There were places in each story where Obi-Wan could see where the truth had been diluted, a single beautiful brushstroke hidden by thousands of messy ones. He was content to let the rumours go through their lifespan. They didn’t bother him.

But he knew they bothered Anakin.

He’d entered the Temple far too late for the other younglings, this Obi-Wan knew, but he’d assumed Anakin would acclimate eventually. Most padawans made friends, either through distant lineage members or through their master’s own peers. Anakin didn’t.

So, it made sense when he spent most of his free time in his own quarters, tinkering with droids, or off at the Senate with the Chancellor.

Palpatine’s interest in Anakin was, to Obi-Wan, understandable. The boy saved the Chancellor’s home planet from invasion and was prodigious enough for the Jedi to break their own rules and let him in. Anakin seemed to enjoy the Chancellor’s guidance and most nights when he came back to the Temple he seemed fine. If it wasn’t something to worry about, Obi-Wan wouldn’t push it. It would just lead to unnecessary strife within their relationship. They’d bickered enough for two lifetimes in the five years since Anakin’s apprenticeship began.

So when Anakin opened the door to their shared quarters and wiped off his boots a bit too aggressively, Obi-Wan didn’t say anything.

He turned back to the stove, churning the thick red stew boiling there. “You’re almost late for supper.”

“Sorry, Master,” Anakin said. Over time, Obi-Wan learned the difference between one of Anakin’s genuine apologies and one of his reflexive ones. He simply kept stirring the meal. It was one of the more complicated dishes Qui-Gon had taught him, one Obi-Wan reserved for special occasions. It was supposed to turn into a mellow shade of purple twelve minutes ago, but he might’ve added the anilam after the zwil root.

 _Or was it before?_ Obi-Wan frowned, leaning away from the stove to the open flimsi book with the instructions hand-written on the page in Qui-Gon’s spidery hand.

He muttered the words under his breath and tried to recall what he’d done to the stew first. Did he stir clock-wise or counter clock-wise? Surely he’d only put it on the heat after it turned red. . .

The acrid smell of burning stew shocked him out of his studies, and Obi-Wan rushed to the pot, grabbing it clumsily by its sides and jerking it off of the heat. He flinched backwards, already feeling the burns forming on his hands, and sighed. Anakin had successfully negotiated a dispute between two planets by himself and Obi-Wan thought it worth celebrating. He’ll probably have to start all over again after this.

He sighed. “Looks like you were early, my young padawan.”

Anakin, from his spot on the couch, nodded blankly. He splayed over the geometric couch, his gangly teenage limbs dangling over the sides and ends. His eyes were far-off and hazy but his mouth kept twitching in the same way it does when he’s trying not to speak out of turn.

Obi-Wan frowned. He reached into one of the cabinets above the counter, and as he slathered on bacta, walked around the kitchen island to the single seat across from Anakin’s position.

The bacta’s pineapple scent drowned out the smell of still-burning stew, making Obi-Wan’s breath come a bit easier, but Anakin didn’t move.

“Is everything alright, Anakin?” Obi-Wan asked. His end of the bond was open but Anakin’s was shut dangerously tight. His padawan huffed and sat up, swinging his legs off of the couch’s arm and onto the floor.

“Master, can you tell me about the old Sith Wars?”

Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow. “You’ve never shown much of an interest in history before.”

“I know,” Anakin sat back in his seat. His hand toyed with his padawan braid, thumbing the beads along the braid’s length. “But the Chancellor was talking about them.”

“I didn’t know Chancellor Palpatine had an interest in the Sith Wars.”

“He just likes the Jedi’s history. Can you tell me about the Sith Wars?”

Obi-Wan frowned. Most of the history about the Sith Wars was locked behind specialization or mastery within the order. Still, he’d made it a point to excel at all his classes when he himself was a padawan, history included.

Obi-Wan recounted his knowledge of the Wars, his padawan listening aptly. Later than night, he laid awake and pondered the Chancellor’s interest in the Jedi.

* * *

Perhaps part of the reason Anakin was interested in the Sith was an interest in war. It was a common topic amongst the Jedi, because their lives seemed to revolve around it. What they did, they did in the interest of preventing or mediating or fighting in interplanetary wars. Everything felt like it was about the eventuality of full scale war.

So they shouldn’t have been surprised when their own war broke out.

Just a few weeks into the war, and he was already tired. Between completing Anakin’s training—a task ever complicated by his apprentice’s new arm—and plotting their next move and adjusting to the constant presence of the clone troopers, it was as if the life had been siphoned out of Obi-Wan, leaving a shell of a person behind.

The Order was overwhelmed. Already they’d lost knights and padawans, starting at Geonosis with no end in sight. They lacked warriors, and the padawans that were fit and able were knighted whether or not their training was complete.

Anakin was not one of those padawans.

It was something that seemed to annoy him to no end, from his scowl when Obi-Wan brought news of a new knight, or the way he toyed with his padawan braid like he was trying to pull it off.

But the first time he really asks is after his first successful campaign, where he acted as commander of one of the 212th’s many divisions.

“Master, I think I’m ready to be knighted.”

Obi-Wan’s eyes flicked away from the carnage on the battlefield, from severed limbs to melted droids, and to Anakin’s lanky frame. “Pardon?”

“I’m ready to be knighted.”

Obi-Wan clipped his lightsaber onto his hip and brushed down his tabards. Anakin trailed behind him as he started back to the Republic’s gunships a few hundred metres away.

“Oh? What makes you say that?”

When he heard Anakin’s deep inhale, he knew he’d made a mistake.

“I’m one of the best swordsmen in the Order. I _am_ the best pilot. I’m ready for the trials; I-I have been for months. I led Ghost Company to take the Separatist command post. I’m ready. I know I am,”

Obi-Wan stepped over a piece of flaming wreckage, trying not to let it singe his greaves as he does. Anakin was accomplished by most metrics. But he neglected his duties as a Jedi. By any observable eyes he was a paragon of everything the Jedi Order has sworn to uphold, but he lacked control. Focus.

Obi-Wan knew he was trying. Anakin had come far since Tatooine, but that didn’t mean he was ready. Knighting him too early will only lead to more pain for the boy.

“Leading one company is far different than leading a battalion,” Obi-Wan pointed out. Anakin huffed.

“You never led a battalion before the war started.”

“But I had experience, padawan.”

Anakin stopped in his steps. Obi-Wan paused a few feet in front of him. When he turned around, he knew he’d be greeted with nothing but an argument. He clasped his arms behind his back and rooted himself in the Force’s dull ebb and flow. Obi-Wan turned.

“How am I supposed to get experience when you won’t let me do anything?”

“Anakin—”

“If you don’t trust me, just say it! I’m sick and tired of your criticism. I-I’m ready, but you keep holding me back!” Anakin stuttered over his words but they hit Obi-Wan like punches to the gut. There was something wrong in Anakin’s eyes. His words seemed like they were pulled from his mouth instead of spoken, his movements jerky and confused.

“You never let me do anything! How am I supposed to grow with you as my master?”

Obi-Wan’s blood hummed in his veins, adrenaline flooding through him, its kick like a bottle of Corellian brandy. This wasn’t Anakin.

“If you don’t want me, just say it!” Anakin yelled, spittle flying from his mouth. He paused, his chest heaving. Obi-Wan’s hand strayed too close to his lightsaber. It happened on instinct, like a reflex built into him instead of taught.

“General. . .”

A low cough interrupted them. Obi-Wan turned to meet the face of one of his many new soldiers. Judging by the scar curling around his temple and cheek, Commander Cody. Obi-Wan stepped towards the commander. “What is it, Commander?”

“There’s new reports from the west. . .”

Obi-Wan glanced to Anakin. His padawan seemed like he had just come out of a battle, his face red and his chest heaving. Obi-Wan turned to Cody and let the clone speak as they walked towards the gunships. 

They didn't speak about it again, but Anakin was knighted a few days later. Obi-Wan didn't tell the council about what he saw.

* * *

Ahsoka tempered Anakin. He managed to get knighted, but Obi-Wan made a point of never speaking about the incident early on in the war. It wouldn’t do anyone any good. And having a a padawan of his own makes Anakin think through his actions before he does them, take responsibility when he messes up.

But there are flashes of that thing he saw. Little moments, nothing as large as what had happened then, but enough to make his stomach coil.

This was only one of them.

Obi-Wan deflected the blaster shot with ease, pressing his back against Anakin’s. His once-apprentice grew, though Obi-Wan sometimes feared it wasn’t for the better. They moved as one, deflecting shot after shot after shot. The battle droids marched on, their steady footsteps forming a rhythm that thrummed through Obi-Wan’s bones.

The dark corridor lit up with the cobalt blue of their lightsabers and the violent red of the blaster shots. They just had to make it until Ahsoka came.

Obi-Wan’s breath came hot and heavy, his normally perfectly-groomed hair falling in his eyes, as his muscles began to burn. How long had they been at this? The Force could only supplement him for so long.

One of the shots came dangerously close to him. He only barely managed to shoot it back at the droid but he had felt the blast roar towards him, the Force scream, and his lightsaber hum as he avoided that shot.

“You okay?” Anakin yelled to be heard over the steady firing of the shots. Obi-Wan huffed.

“I’ve been better!” He responded. There was no time to reach out to Ahsoka in the Force, direct her to them, not unless he wanted to get shot full of blaster bolts.

“Where’s Ahsoka?” Anakin ducked. Obi-Wan ducked with him. Several shots whizzed past their heads, close enough to burn his hair and have the scent flood the room.

“I don’t know!”

Anakin was silent for a moment and Obi-Wan almost turned around, fearing the worse, before his student let out a deep breath and pushed his arms out.

The droids around them fell like flimsi cards. Their metal skulls crumpled and the Force coiled around Anakin like a bowstring pulled too tightly. They seized. Obi-Wan knew that metal droids could not feel pain—were not programmed to—but their modulated screams made something in him twist in instinctual discomfort.

Anakin curled his fingers and the backs of the droids snapped, their metal frames crumpling in on themselves like a poorly made doll.

He let go, and the droids fell to the ground. Their blasters laid abandoned on the floor.

Two green lightsabers poked out from the wall, cutting a slightly uneven hole in it. The piece of metal flew out of its place and a young Togruta, lightsabers held behind her in a very unorthodox way, skidded to a stop in the hallway.

“Oh. You took care of it,” Ahsoka straightened. Obi-Wan nodded.

“Call Captain Rex. He’s awaiting our signal.”

Ahsoka nodded, already raising her comlink to her mouth. While that beeped and buzzed in the background, Obi-Wan observed the carnage.

There was no blood. The droids aren’t sentient, after all. But they died with their hands wrapped around their necks, their hands clutching their heads, and Obi-Wan swore he could see fear in their unblinking eyes.

“Are you alright?” he spoke quietly. Anakin, who was observing his handiwork with a straight look of fascination, the way a child observes their science projects, shrugged.

“Yeah, I’m good.”

Obi-Wan frowned.

The Force was coiled too tightly around his apprentice. It rolled around him like a hurricane circling its eye. He could read Anakin like he could read a battlefield. He knew what the set of his shoulders meant, the tension in his neck. There was nothing normal about this, but Anakin had never been normal. He had always been extraordinary. Perhaps that was a new ability: one only he possessed.

Deep down, he knew what Anakin had done.

He could not bring himself to acknowledge it. He could only pray he would not do it again.

* * *

After, he is the one to get Anakin.

The council does not have to send him. Obi-Wan goes out of the Temple alone, a few hours after Ahsoka had left, expecting Anakin to be out on the streets of Coruscant or with Senator Amidala. He checked the hangar, then Anakin's quarters, the duelling rooms, everything he could think of, but he didn't expect Anakin to be standing outside of the Temple staring blankly.

"Anakin," Obi-Wan said, and he _hated_ how feeble he sounded. Anakin stood as still as one of the Temple's statues. "Anakin, you should come inside."

Anakin's face was a mask of serenity. He almost looked peaceful, if not for the tears still trickling down his face. Coruscant's dying light made him look pale as a ghost. Obi-Wan grabbed his shoulder and turned him around. He didn't know if the bone-deep anger was his or Anakin's. He didn't know which was worse.

"Come on," Obi-Wan led him away from the stairs, where Ahsoka surely left, and back towards the Temple.

Nobody questioned them as they passed through the great halls of the Temple. Aayla glanced at them and nodded, her large eyes full of sorrow, but she didn't speak. 

Obi-Wan led Anakin to his own bed, where he sighed, chest shuddering, and leaned his head in his hands. The bed sagged as Obi-Wan sat neck to him. Ahsoka's padawan braid, clutched tightly in Anakin's hand, tangled in his hair as Anakin's chest shook and his body was wracked with sobs. Anakin had only cried three times in front of him. Once, the night after he entered the Order, when Ahsoka died on Mortis (a memory too hazy for Obi-Wan to parse through properly) and now. 

Obi-Wan placed an arm around Anakin's shoulders. _Focus on this_ , he told himself, _focus on Anakin. Anything else and you will surely fall apart._

He wanted to tell Anakin it was for the better, that this way Ahsoka won't be caught up in the war, or the Senate, that she'll be able to truly live, but the words die and sour on his mouth like ash. There was no making this better. 

"Anakin—"

"I hate them," Anakin said. His voice was like wind scraping the skin off of Obi-Wan, the low keen of a dying animal, the shout of the Force as the lightsaber passed through Qui-Gon's chest.

 _Jedi do not hate_.

Obi-Wan only bit his lip to keep his own tears from spilling over and rubbed Anakin's back. They would get through this. They always did.

* * *

He counts back all of the warning signs over the years as Anakin writhes on the ground, his eyes snake-yellow. Obi-Wan is yelling **—** when did he start yelling?—and Anakin yells back, but it comes out as white noise to the looping backtrack of horror. This isn't how it's supposed to be. This was never how it was supposed to be. They were supposed to make it out of the war, all three of them, Ahsoka and Anakin and Obi-Wan but there's nothing to go back to anymore.

There were so many signs. All of them missed. This was never how it was supposed to be, but this is how it is.

* * *

When Vader's lightsaber passes through his chest, Obi-Wan does not cry. 

**Author's Note:**

> this was written in a mid-afternoon rage-fuelled writing binge so please forgive me for any mistakes
> 
> \+ [twitter](https://twitter.com/elsamidalas)


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